It’s always unsettling to hear how cruel people can be towards animals. Sick, heartless people abuse innocent creatures in twisted ways and get away with it.
But this story is the worst we’ve heard in a while: someone is murdering innocent horses, and they’re still at large. Now the search is on, and one group is offering a major reward for information about the culprit.
In Floyd County, Kentucky, herds of free-roaming abandoned horses are used to reclamate the land after strip mining.
But in the past month, a shocking tragedy has occurred: someone has been killing these horses by gunshot.
At least 20 horses have been found dead near the site. The Floyd County Sheriff’s Office has been teaming up with local rescue group Dumas Rescue to investigate the grizzly murder spree.
“Seeing them gunned down is… it’s beyond horrific,” Tonya Conn, president of Dumas Rescue, told WYMT. “These horses were scattered in various, various places, distances from each other so they had been shot, and they’d scattered then hunted and shot down.”
The horses included young foals and pregnant mothers. One was found with grass in its mouth—it had been innocently feeding before it was shot.
“This is very inhumane and it’s a very cruel act of somebody who just apparently had nothing else to do said John Hunt, Floyd County Sheriff. “It looked like a battlefield for just horses, we counted 15 that we found dead.”
Even for people who deal with this kind of violence and cruelty regularly, it was a heartbreaking sight.
“I’ve been doing rescues since 2004,” Conn told CNN. “We see a lot of starvation and a lot of cruelty, but that was the most horrific scene I’ve ever been on. Just cold-blooded malice.”
Dumas Rescue posted shocking photos of the horses on Facebook. They contain graphic imagery, but serve as a brutal reminder of the severity of the situation and the demand for justice.
“I know these pictures are hard to look at, and even harder to stomach but this is reality,” Dumas Rescue Group wrote. “This is the truth. Please continue to share their story, we are their only voice. They deserve justice and someone out there knows who did this.”
Sadly, because the site is so remote, vast and unmonitored, there’s little evidence to go off of.
If there’s a silver lining in this, it’s that the public has responded with a huge outpouring of support.
The reward for information that could lead to the culprit’s arrest was initially $500, but thanks to community donations they are now offering $20,000.
Hopefully, there is someone out there with valuable information that can bring this horrible person to justice. It’s sickening to imagine this person could get away with such atrocities—and even more so to think they could kill again.
“To think that somebody could point a gun and aim it at a horse and pull the trigger and do it repeatedly is unimaginable,” Hunt told CNN.
Let’s hope the investigation continues, and that the police and rescue workers succeed in bringing this killer to justice. You can donate to Dumas Rescue through their PayPal.
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